James Peirce

James Peirce (1674?–1726) was an English dissenting minister, the catalyst for the Salter's Hall controversy.

The son of John Peirce, he was born at Wapping about 1674. His parents, who were in easy circumstances, were members of the congregational church at Stepney, under Matthew Mead. Left an orphan about 1680, he was placed, with a brother and sister, in the charge of Mead as guardian. Mead took him into his own house, and educated him with his son Richard Mead under John Nesbitt and Thomas Singleton; and also at Utrecht (from 1689) and Leyden (from 1692). At Utrecht he formed a lasting friendship with his fellow-student Adrian Reland, the orientalist; and he made friendships among his class-mates at Leyden, then the gathering-place of the upper crust of English dissent. He travelled in Flanders and Germany before returning home in 1695.

After spending some time in Oxford, to study at the Bodleian Library, he returned to London, was admitted (11 February 1697) a member of Mead's church, and preached the evening lecture at Miles Lane congregational church, of which Matthew Clarke the younger was minister. He did not interest himself in the current disputes in London between Presbyterians and Congregationalists; and was ordained in 1699 by four London Presbyterians, headed by Matthew Sylvester, the literary executor of Richard Baxter. His own ideal of church government was based on Baxter's rectoral theory; he had no theoretical objection to a modified episcopacy.

Early in 1701 Peirce's Presbyterian friends urged his acceptance of a charge in Green Street, Cambridge, where there was a mixed congregation of Independents and Presbyterians; in 1696 some of Joseph Hussey's congregation had seceded to it. Agreeing to take it for three years, he was duly ‘dismissed’ to it by the Stepney church. He held it for six years (1701–6). Pierce still was ranked as an Independent, for he was made a trustee of the Hog Hill chapel on 23 January 1702. At Cambridge he was intimate with William Whiston, who described him as ‘the most learned of all the dissenting teachers I have known.’ He read much, especially in the topics of nonconformist controversy. John Fox described him as sitting in his study from nine at night till four or five next morning.

...
Wikipedia